Dictionary:

liberalism

  (lĭb'ər-ə-lĭz'əm, lĭb'rə-)

1. The state or quality of being liberal.
2. 1. A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.
   2. often Liberalism The tenets or policies of a Liberal party.
3. An economic theory in favor of laissez-faire, the free market, and the gold standard.
4. Liberalism
   1. A 19th-century Protestant movement that favored free intellectual inquiry, stressed the ethical and humanitarian content of Christianity, and de-emphasized dogmatic theology.
   2. A 19th-century Roman Catholic movement that favored political democracy and ecclesiastical reform but was theologically orthodox.

In general, the belief that it is the aim of politics to preserve individual rights and to maximize freedom of choice. In common with socialism and conservatism, it emerged from the conjunction of the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the political revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Liberalism retains a faith in the possibilities of improvement in present social conditions, which is related to the idea of progress widely accepted in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That idea embraced the prospects for developments in knowledge, in welfare, and in morality. Although the confidence in the prospects for progress in some of these respects has now diminished (see post-modernism), liberalism retains an ameliorative ambition. The Enlightenment also shaped liberalism's perception of human agency, conceived as (at least potentially) rational and responsible. The political revolutions in France and America disclose an ambiguous heritage. The emphasis placed on equal rights remains, and this is the fundamental form of equality most liberals would aim to achieve. On the other side, liberalism has been pictured by its critics as infected with bourgeois values, those appropriate to the position of the emerging class of capitalists in present industrial society.

Apart from the concern with equality of rights and amelioration, liberalism has focused on the space available in which individuals may pursue their own lives, or their own conception of the good. The immediate threat to this ‘space’ was considered to be the arbitrary will of a monarch, leading liberals to consider the proper limits of political power. They explored the relationship between legitimate power and consent, and the characteristics of the rule of law. Other threats were seen in religious intolerance and the power of public opinion, or social intolerance. In a general way, liberalism has tried to define the line to be drawn between the public and the private, an approach which has several key components.

The first is the project of describing the peculiar features of political power, in contrast to the power which might be held or exercised in private domains. Locke, for example, devoted considerable attention to the distinctions to be drawn between the power of a master over a servant, the power of a master over a slave, paternal power, and the power of a husband over a wife, on one side, and political power, on the other. None of those ‘domestic’ power relations illuminated the nature of political power, which was legitimate if, and only if, the governed consented to it. That power was to be directed at the public good, limited by its purposes and regulated by settled and known law. This notion of limited government has been in the centre of liberal concerns: the rule of law, separation of powers, constitutionalism, emphasis on civil liberties, for example, are consequences of a desire to restrict political power to what is conceived to be its proper domain.

A second aspect of the limitation of government has been an emphasis on the autonomy of the economic realm, and a defence of private property. This characterization, however, needs to be treated with caution. Liberals have not always been enthusiastic proponents of a laissez-faire policy, not least because they have recognized that a market system is not capable of guaranteeing the conditions of its own existence. Again, while private property has generally been supported as providing a bulwark against state power, allowing some prospect of independence, many liberals have been concerned about the effects of concentrations of private property. It has been a common, but not wholly justified, complaint against liberal thought that it takes insufficient notice of the effects of private power as a consequence of its concern to limit public power.

The advent of democracy has posed particular problems for liberalism, which has given only a qualified endorsement to the idea of government by the people. Whilst democracy might be welcomed as a counter to the tendency of those who hold power to pursue their own interests, it may threaten individual liberty in new ways. (See tyranny of the majority.) More generally, liberals have been concerned lest the levelling tendencies of mass society suppress individual initiative and eliminate the space for experiments in ways of life. Just as liberalism has had an uncertain relationship with unrestrained democracy, so too it has had a complex relationship with utilitarianism. Some accounts of liberalism restrict their consideration to writers who have endorsed natural rights, thus excluding all utilitarian contributions. Even if attachment to natural rights is not considered to be a qualification, some accounts regard utilitarianism as propounded by Bentham and J. S. Mill as a deviation from the main tradition of liberal thought: Benthamism seems to license greater state activity than is desired, while J. S. Mill was sympathetic to socialist experiment, and paid insufficient regard to the sanctity of private property. The controversy between rights theorists and utilitarians continues, but it is not clear that only the former have a claim to be regarded as liberals. At stake is the balance between the welfarist ambitions of utilitarianism, which are consonant with the liberal concern with amelioration, and the liberal emphasis on the protection of the individual from the effects of public power, which may be incompatible with unrestrained utilitarianism. All political ideologies can be seen as dynamic, in the sense that particular values to which they are attached have to be defended in the face of new threats, or reassessed in the light of changing conditions. For this reason, amongst others, there is no shared conception of freedom within liberalism. The so-called new liberals, who were responding to conditions at the end of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the twentieth century, adopted a more positive conception than many of their predecessors, a conception which re-emphasized the welfare concern of utilitarians with whom they otherwise had little in common. Contemporary liberalism has been much exercised by the notion of justice. Rawls (1921-2002), Dworkin, Nozick, and Ackerman are perhaps the most highly regarded contributors to this discussion. This concern with justice has been linked to another characterization of contemporary liberalism, a concern with neutrality. The relevant neutrality may be variously conceived, but it certainly includes a neutrality with respect to citizens' conceptions of the good. communitarian critics have doubted whether the priority of the (justice-based notion of) right over the good can be sustained, but it is clear that in many spheres the liberal ambition is to produce neutral procedures which allow for, but do not discriminate between, the diverse conceptions of the good or ways of life adopted by citizens. Such neutrality suggests that the role of public power is merely instrumental, creating the necessary space for the exercise of individual freedom and providing for conflict-resolution; such an approach has been challenged not only by communitarianism but also by liberal perfectionism.

— Andrew Reeve

For more information on liberalism, visit Britannica.com.

A political ideology centred upon the individual (see individualism), thought of as possessing rights against the government, including rights of due process under the law, equality of respect, freedom of expression and action, and freedom from religious and ideological constraint. Liberalism is attacked from the left as the ideology of free markets, with no defence against the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few, and as lacking any analysis of the social and political nature of persons. It is attacked from the right as insufficiently sensitive to the value of settled institutions and customs, or to the need for social structure and constraint in providing the matrix for individual freedoms.

For centuries the word "liberal" has carried multiple meanings, on the one hand meaning generous or broad-minded, on the other dissolute or undisciplined. In American history the concept of liberalism has been similarly multivalent despite its champions' and critics' efforts to narrow or simplify its significance. Despite an enduring myth that a single "liberal tradition" has dominated American history, the central liberal values of generosity toward the poor and toleration of diversity have always been contested. Contemporary critics of liberalism fall into two distinct camps. Conservatives, including many Republican Party loyalists, accuse liberals of mobilizing the resources of big government in a futile effort to engineer equality without respecting individual property rights. Academic cultural radicals, by contrast, accuse liberals of neglecting the egalitarian aspirations of marginalized Americans and paying too much attention to individual property rights. Can the ideas of liberalism, assailed from the right and the left, be salvaged?

Varieties of Liberalism

Viewed historically, liberalism in America bears little resemblance to today's stereotypes. From the seventeenth century onward, liberals have tried to balance their commitments to individual freedom, social equality, and representative democracy. Until recently, most American liberals conceived of individual rights within the ethical framework provided by the Christian law of love. Puritan John Winthrop, for example, was neither an egalitarian nor a pluralist, but in 1630 he characterized "liberallity" toward the least fortunate members of the community as a duty Christians must observe. Massachusetts pastor John Wise, writing in 1707, invoked the German philosopher of natural law Samuel von Pufendorf rather than the Englishman John Locke to bolster his claim that the principles of sociability and love of mankind operate alongside the principle of self-reservation. Similar combinations of religious, ethical, and traditional restraints on personal freedom provided the vocabularies employed when Americans began to challenge different aspects of British rule after 1767. The resulting discourses of protest culminated first in local and state declarations of independence, then in state constitutional conventions, and finally in the United States Constitution, complete with its Bill of Rights. As all these documents stipulated, what Thomas Jefferson termed the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" could be pursued legitimately only within boundaries established "by certain laws for the common good," as John Adams put it in the 1779 Constitution of Massachusetts. Whether that concern for the public interest derived from the Christian law of love or the Scottish common-sense philosophers' principle of benevolence, from the English common law or colonial legal practice, from classical republicanism or Renaissance civic humanism, from Pufendorf or Locke, the concept of justice as a goal transcending the satisfaction of individuals' personal preferences pervaded the founding documents that secured the rights of citizens in the new nation.

But what about those denied citizenship? Proclamations of the common good clashed with the fact that a majority of Americans did not enjoy equal liberties. In response, some mid-nineteenth-century liberal reformers such as Sarah Grimké and Frederick Douglass began to clamor for women's rights and the abolition of slavery. A few invoked the principle of toleration to protest the removal of Indians from their ancestral lands. Others invoked the language of liberty on behalf of a campaign for economic enterprise that extended Enlightenment convictions about the civilizing effects of commerce and economic growth. But local and state laws continued to circumscribe much economic activity with regulations premised on the common-law doctrine of the people's welfare, a principle invoked to justify laws controlling the use of waterways, the operation of stables and slaughterhouses, and the licensing of butchers, bakers, grocers, physicians, and lawyers. Many of those who clamored for the right of all to own property justified their claims by invoking egalitarian ideals rather than more individualist concepts of natural rights. The notion of laissez-faire never succeeded in uprooting such practices and traditions. In the decade prior to the Civil War, contrasting appeals to equal rights assumed strikingly different meanings in the North and the South. When Lincoln succeeded in tying the expansion of slavery to the degradation of free labor, he bound the political, economic, and religious strands of liberal reform sentiment into a fragile but impressive coalition perceived by the South as a threat to slaveholders' property rights.

Setting a pattern for times of peril, during the Civil War the restriction of civil liberties was justified by the goal of securing liberty. Afterward the sacrifice of the freed slaves' rights and the postponement of women's rights were both justified by the goal of restoring a Union rededicated to the principle of liberty for white men. Lincoln's more generous and more broad-minded vision of the national purpose faded from view.

For a brief moment in the late-nineteenth century, gangs of greedy industrialists and politicians hijacked liberal principles to rationalize the unchecked exploitation of people and resources, but by the turn of the century agrarian and labor activists were working to bring that anomalous period to a close. Some coalitions of progressive reformers sought to restore the earlier liberal balance between rights and obligations, invoking the eighteenth-century concept of the common good to justify restoring the authority of government as a counterweight to the assertion of private prerogatives. Their "new liberalism" sought to harness the techniques of science to regulate an industrializing and urbanizing America in order to secure effective freedom for all instead of protecting empty, formal rights that enabled "the interests" to oppress "the people." Thinkers such as John Dewey and W. E. B. Du Bois and reformers such as Louis Brandeis and Jane Addams yoked the language of liberty and justice to the philosophy of pragmatism and the energetic engagement of public authority to address social and economic problems.

Although business interests protested at first, during and after World War I they learned how to live with government because it promised to secure and legitimate the stability they prized. The Great Depression shattered their hopes and altered their strategy. Although large enterprises continued to depend on the state's cooperation, the business community developed an ideology of implacable opposition to "liberal" government intrusions into the "private" sector.

The New Deal emerged from the chaos of the depression, established a new social vision, then ended in retreat in the late 1940s when its opponents in both parties joined forces to defend hierarchies of race and privilege. Although Franklin D. Roosevelt initially lacked a coherent program of national recovery, by the end of World War II he and his advisers had transformed the meaning of liberalism. When he declared in 1944 that the Allies were fighting to secure a "Second Bill of Rights," including the rights to higher education, a job, a living wage, decent housing, and health care for all citizens, he established an agenda that has continued to drive liberal politics ever since. During the Cold War, critics derided such programs as being antithetical to an "American way of life" that sanctified the individual rights of a privileged majority, and interpreted invocations of a shared common good as evidence of dangerous communist sympathies.

Recent Debates

In the wake of World War II, renewed efforts to secure rights for African Americans and women culminated in legal and legislative milestones but failed to achieve social and economic equality. Many liberals who championed the rights of blacks and women in the 1960s eventually also allied themselves with campaigns against discrimination stemming from sexuality, age, and physical and mental disability. Such movements have proliferated since 1980, when Ronald Reagan became president, by proclaiming that government is the problem rather than the solution. Since then many liberals abandoned FDR's ambitious plans for a more egalitarian form of social democracy and turned instead toward a strategy that emphasized the rights of individuals who are members of disadvantaged groups. As a result, liberalism seemed to many Americans in the twenty-first century nothing more than a catalog of complaints asserted on behalf of minorities asserting themselves against the traditions and the will of the majority.

Although the proclamation of equal rights for aggrieved groups has been an important part of liberalism ever since theorists such as Locke and Jefferson asserted the importance of religious toleration, liberals surrender precious resources from their heritage when they narrow their discourse to rights talk. They risk appearing as narrowly self-interested as those conservatives who, following in the path of Thomas Hobbes, have tried to reduce politics to the protection of individual rights, particularly the right to property. The historical record indicates that Americans drawn to liberalism have tried instead to balance liberty, equality, and the common good. They have understood, as James Madison wrote to James Monroe in 1786, that the idea of self interest must be "qualified with every necessary moral ingredient" or else it can be used to justify all sorts of injustice. Insofar as liberals neglect the ideas of ethical responsibility, social obligation, and justice that animated the writings and reform activities of many of their predecessors, they will find themselves vulnerable to such criticism.

Sturdier versions of liberal theory emerged in the late twentieth century through the efforts of scholars influenced by John Rawls, whose monumental work A Theory of Justice (1971) provided a rationale for keeping alive the spirit of FDR's Second Bill of Rights. Rawls argued, in the tradition of theorists such as Locke, Wise, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Dewey, that a liberal society must balance the values of liberty and equality. Rawls reasoned that individuals entering a hypothetical social compact, ignorant of their own gifts and goals, would choose two principles of justice. First, and for Rawls this principle takes precedence over the second, they would provide each person with the most extensive set of liberties compatible with an equally extensive set of liberties for others. Second, any social or economic inequalities in the society would be attached to positions open to everyone and must be in the interest of the least advantaged members of the society. Rawls's theory, which updates the original liberal injunctions to protect liberty and provide for the weak, sparked a lively controversy and prompted Rawls to refine his views in Political Liberalism (1993). Critics from the right charged Rawls with overstating the redistributive claims of the community against the rights of the individual. Some imagined a "night watchman state," a chimera that has bewitched conservatives who overlook the dependence of market economies on the (government-enforced) rule of law and the (government-funded) provision of social services. Critics from the left challenged Rawls's abstract, rights-bearing individuals, reasoning that real human beings are influenced more by the cultural traditions they inherit and the aspirations they cherish than by any abstract rights they might envision.

Many early twenty-first century liberal theorists emphasized the importance of such cultural traditions, whether religious, ethnic, national, or civic, in shaping the debates that yield liberal democratic ideals and procedures. Some, such as Richard Rorty, insisted that liberalism could no longer rest on solid footing in the universal principles that earlier liberal thinkers invoked. Others, such as Michael Walzer, continued to turn to the Western tradition itself for the religious, philosophical, and political resources necessary to renew liberalism through democratic deliberation in a pluralist and contentious age. Thus liberalism, best understood as a fluid discourse concerning the meaning and relative importance of the ideals of generosity and broad-mindedness, still attracted adherents. Against competing conservative values such as hierarchy and tradition, and against radical doubts about norms such as reason and fairness, liberalism continued to assert itself as a rich and important constellation of ideas in the highly charged atmosphere of American culture.

Bibliography

Galston, William. Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Glendon, Mary Ann. Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. New York: Basic Books, 1991.

Hartz, Louis. The Liberal Tradition in America. New York: Harcourt, 1955.

Kloppenberg, James T. The Virtues of Liberalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971.

Walzer, Michael. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic Books, 1983.

Any discussion of Russian liberalism must start with a general definition of the term. The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy emphasizes liberals' advocacy of individual liberty and freedom from unjustified restraint. In the nineteenth century, liberalism had a strong economic strain, stressing industrialization and laissez-faire economics. With one notable exception, Russia's first liberals were little concerned with economic affairs, as the country remained mired in a semi-feudal agrarian economy. And at all times, the quest for political liberty was at the heart of Russian liberalism.

While it is impossible to select a starting point that will satisfy everyone, an early figure in the quest for freedom was Alexander Radishchev, a well-educated and widely traveled Russian nobleman. He is best known for his A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow (1790) that vividly exposed the evils of Russian serfdom, an institution little different from slavery in the American south of the time. An enraged Empress Catherine the Great (r. 1762 - 1796) demanded his execution but settled for Radishchev's banishment to Siberia. Pardoned in 1799, he was nonetheless a broken man who committed suicide in 1802. Yet Radishchev served as an inspiration to both radicals and liberals for decades to come.

In particular he inspired the Decembrist movement of 1825. This group of noble military officers attempted to seize power in an effort so confusing that they are known simply by the month of their failed coup. Five of the conspirators were executed, but many of them advocated the abolition of serfdom and autocracy, two hallmarks of early Russian liberalism.

Under Emperor Nicholas I (r. 1825 - 1855), virtually all talk of real reform earned the attention of the secret police. Yet some Russians found a way to express themselves; most important was the historian, Timofei Granovsky, who used his lectern to express his hostility to serfdom, advocacy of religious intolerance, and his admiration for parliamentary regimes. His influence was largely limited, however, to his pupils, including one of Russia's most famous liberals, the philosopher and historian Boris Chicherin.

Chicherin's political career began under the reform-minded Emperor Alexander II (r. 1855 - 1881) and included both theoretical and practical pursuits. The author of several books and innumerable articles and reviews, Chicherin was also a professor and an active politician. His liberalism included a vigorous defense of personal liberties protected by law and a consistent rejection of violence to achieve political change. He was the first prominent Russian liberal to defend a free market as a prerequisite for political liberty, squarely breaking with the emerging socialist movement.

Another important liberal was Ivan Petrunkevich. Following two attempts on the life of Emperor Alexander II, the government issued an appeal for public support against terrorism. In response, Petrunkevich declared in 1878 that the people must resist not only terror from below, but also terror from above. That same year, he met with five terrorists in an effort to unite all opponents of the status quo, an effort that failed because the terrorists rejected Petrunkevich's demand that they disavow violence. In an 1879 pamphlet he insisted upon the convocation of a constituent assembly to guarantee basic civil liberties. Despite frequent clashes with the government, Petrunkevich remained active in politics even after his exile following the Bolshevik revolution.

At the turn of the century, Russia was on the eve of revolution. Rapid industrialization under appalling conditions fostered a radical working class movement, while a surge in the peasant population produced widespread land hunger. At the same time a middle class of capitalists and professionals was emerging, and from it came many of Russia's leading liberals.

The last emperor, Nicholas II (1894 - 1917), proved singularly incapable of handling the Herculean task of ruling Russia. He quickly dashed any hopes liberals may have entertained for reform when he dismissed notions of diluting his autocratic power as "senseless dreams." Nonetheless, the liberals remained active.

In 1901 they established their own journal, Liberation, and two years later an organization, the Union of Liberation. When Russia exploded in the Revolution of 1905, the Union coordinated a movement that ranged from strikes to terrorist assassinations. Nicholas made concessions that only fueled the rebellion and in April, liberals were demanding the convocation of a constituent assembly to create a new order. In October, Nicholas issued the October Manifesto, guaranteeing basic civil liberties and the election of a national assembly, the Duma, with real political power. By then the liberals had their own political party, the Constitutional Democrats (Cadets).

It seemed that liberalism's great opportunity had arrived. At the very least, several liberals achieved national prominence in the years after 1905. Pyotr Struve, an economist and political scientist, originally embraced Marxism, but by 1905, he espoused a radical liberalism that called for full civil liberties and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. He was elected to the Second Duma and supported Russia's entrance into the World War I. When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, Struve joined the unsuccessful opposition and soon left Russia for good.

The most prominent liberal of the late imperial period was the historian, Pavel Milyukov. In 1895 his political views cost him a teaching position, and he used the time to travel abroad, visiting the United States. His public lectures emphasized the need to abolish the autocracy and the right to basic civil liberties. But Milyukov also realized that liberalism was doomed if it failed to address the land issue in an overwhelmingly agrarian nation.

Milyukov supported Russia's participation in World War I, but by 1916 he was so exasperated with the catastrophic prosecution of the war that he publicly implied that treason had penetrated to the highest levels of the government. When the autocracy collapsed in February 1917, Milyukov became the foreign minister of the provisional government, the highest office ever reached by a Russian liberal. It did not last long. Under great pressure, in May he issued a promise to the allies that Russia would remain in the war to the bitter end. Antiwar demonstrations ensued, and Milyukov was forced to resign. He died in France in 1943.

Despite the efforts of Milyukov, Struve, and others, Russian liberalism increasingly fell between two stools. On the one hand were the revolutionaries who had nothing but contempt for liberals with their willingness to compromise with the imperial system. The regime's supporters, on the other hand, saw the liberals as little better than bomb-throwing revolutionaries. In a society as polarized as Russia was in 1914, with a political system as archaic as its leader was incompetent, any form of political moderation was likely doomed.

The Communists thoroughly crushed all opposition, but some brave individuals continued to call for human freedom, the most important being Andrei Sakharov. A physicist by training, he was a man of extraordinary intelligence and courage. Admitted as a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences at the age of thirty-two, he was deprived of the lavish privileges accorded the scientific elite of the USSR on account of his subsequent advocacy of human rights and civil liberties. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, Sakharov returned to national prominence; he died almost exactly two years before the demise of the Soviet Union on Christmas 1991.

In the Russian Federation of the early twenty-first century, political terms such as liberal, conservative, radical, and so on are almost meaningless. But liberalism in its more traditional sense won a major victory in the 1996 presidential election when Boris Yeltsin defeated the Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov. Yeltsin's liberal credentials were later much criticized, but he successfully defended freedom of speech, the press, and religion, and he initiated free market reforms. At the very least, liberalism became more powerful in Russia than any time in the past.

Bibliography

Fischer, George. (1958). Russian Liberalism: From Gentry to Intelligentsia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hamburg, Gary. (1992). Boris Chicherin and Early Russian Liberalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Roosevelt, Patricia. (1986). Apostle of Russian Liberalism: Timofei Granovsky. Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners.

Stockdale, Melissa K. (1996). Paul Miliukov and the Quest for a Liberal Russia, 1880 - 1918. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Timberlake, Charles, ed. (1972). Essays on Russian Liberalism. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.

Walicki, Andrzej. (1986). Legal Philosophies of Russian Liberalism. Oxford: Clarendon.

—HUGH PHILLIPS

In the twentieth century, a viewpoint or ideology associated with free political institutions and religious toleration, as well as support for a strong role of government in regulating capitalism and constructing the welfare state.

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